Linux saves the day ... again

I've spoken in the past about how even the most ardent Windows technician really needs to have a Linux Live CD in their toolkit. The reasons don't stop coming.

Just today a user reported laptop problems. They booted normally, got to the login screen, entered their credentials, and then a blue screen crash.

Attempts to reboot all met with a message that the computer could not boot. Windows kindly offered to attempt a repair but after chugging away for a while reported it could not resolve the issue. Neither safe mode nor “last known good” startup options got any further.

Booting from a Windows installation DVD - whether Windows Vista or Windows 7 did not help. Both offered the same repair option, with similar lack of result, and neither would perform an upgrade installation unless invoked from within Windows itself.

At this point, others might succumb to re-imaging the hard drive and cutting their losses.

In this case, I had a bootable Ubuntu 8.04 CD with me. This distribution is over 12 months old; I do have other distributions and later Ubuntu releases but mostly on USB sticks or discs elsewhere. However, that was no big deal. The laptop – a Fujitsu S6420 – booted from it happily.

Often detractors of Linux allege it has a lack of driver support. If you found this to be the case – possibly several years ago – you may be pleasantly surprised by trying out a current Linux release.

In my case, I was fully operational on the Fujitsu laptop without any effort, just from the image and drivers on the CD itself. This included the keyboard, screen, touchpad, internal hard drive and the Ethernet network adapter. Now, true, I didn’t try playing a movie but for the purpose of fixing a computer I had everything I needed.

Once in Linux I had much more power at my command. I copied the user’s documents and data to a USB memory stick. I browsed the C: drive, and I looked up messages online using the Firefox web browser.

I knew, from the time spent battling with Windows, that the problem was a corrupt registry. This meant the files in C:\Windows\System32\Config were damaged.

First I copied these onto the flash stick too, expecting that if one or more files could not copy that this would show a faulty file, and a possibly damaged physical disk. However, the files all copied without incident.

I looked under C:\System Volume Information for registry files but alas, System Restore had been disabled on this particular system.

Not to worry, for good versions were in C:\Windows\System32\Config\RegBack. I’d already backed up the current registry files to the flash disk above so I replaced them with the ones under RegBack.

This time, and delightfully, the laptop rebooted into Windows just as if nothing happened. A few tests confirmed the system was fully operational with all software and policies and options as they should be.

I was mildly surprised; literature indicated the files under RegBack were typically old copies from when the system was first installed unless a backup tool had been used. Nevertheless, all our post-setup installations were present and working.

Given that Windows identified the problem was a registry issue, and that all I had to do was replace the in-use registry with copies from the RegBack folder it is astounding Windows was unable to perform these simple steps in its alleged auto-repair mode.

Nevertheless, with nary a tool but an Ubuntu Linux Live CD the system was repaired and running.

There was no loss of data, there was no time spent re-imaging. The user was happy.

No matter how disposed you are towards Windows, if you don’t have at least one Linux CD in your arsenal you’re hampering yourself. It’s a better Windows recovery tool than Windows itself.